LucPatenaude said:At this pace, buddy, you will need another 3 whole years for that single, playable map.

Here's a hint at how it should be done in order to speed up the coding:

1. Do your items that are to be drawn and, then give them the sprites necessary for this items to move or not move.

2. Add all of these items by giving them a specific file extension/designation to each of them into a data file folder.

3. Once all data folders are created. By using the main game file, instruct the game to reach out and use these items to make a random set of spreaded out items onto a territory based terrain type of a map.

4. The terrain will be hard-coded within the main file of the game. You may want to do that right-a-way before the items of the data files.

5. Now, here is the tricky part: Creating a window that will have all the buttons that instructs the main game file of what the user/player has in mind of doing.

6. Once the single player button is chosen, must be ready to pop-up another window that will give all instructions necessary to create the map that is intended to play on. In other words, the game becomes the R.M.G. that in turn is no longer a mere feature to be included in the game.

7. The whole idea is to get rid of the manual making of maps in order to speed up the creation of personally made maps.

8. Also, by doing this, a very neat feature would be to interlink those specific maps in order to make a continuous suite of maps that would be called later on as a major campaign. You the maker of the main game, can create your own lore of your own game and, make several campaigns that keeps following themselves as a whole worlds story that could be over 25 campaigns long(small DLCs to add every 6 months or so).

9. In conclusion: The end of the last lore bound story of the new world's campaign, means to reveal the whole planet/world that you the player just succeeded at unifying the whole as a peace bound realm.

10. I guess that you did undertook a way bigger project that you thought you were delving into. I am right? I do think so, big time.

LucPatenaude said:
7. The whole idea is to get rid of the manual making of maps in order to speed up the creation of personally made maps.

8. Also, by doing this, a very neat feature would be to interlink those specific maps in order to make a continuous suite of maps that would be called later on as a major campaign. You the maker of the main game, can create your own lore of your own game and, make several campaigns that keeps following themselves as a whole worlds story that could be over 25 campaigns long(small DLCs to add every 6 months or so).

9. In conclusion: The end of the last lore bound story of the new world's campaign, means to reveal the whole planet/world that you the player just succeeded at unifying the whole as a peace bound realm.

I also don't get the idea of campaigns made of a string of random maps.
Also how would randomly created maps, be anything near personally made?
If you want to include a story, even in a random generated map, you'd still have to edit it. Even more so, if tying a bunch of maps together into a campaign. Now what puzzles me even more, is how would you possibly balance the campaign if you just put together a string of random maps? I don't see much difference in wheter the randomly chosen maps are pre-made or all randomly generated for the occasion. Balance will be just as random as the maps.
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LucPatenaude said:
7. The whole idea is to get rid of the manual making of maps in order to speed up the creation of personally made maps.

8. Also, by doing this, a very neat feature would be to interlink those specific maps in order to make a continuous suite of maps that would be called later on as a major campaign. You the maker of the main game, can create your own lore of your own game and, make several campaigns that keeps following themselves as a whole worlds story that could be over 25 campaigns long(small DLCs to add every 6 months or so).

9. In conclusion: The end of the last lore bound story of the new world's campaign, means to reveal the whole planet/world that you the player just succeeded at unifying the whole as a peace bound realm.

I also don't get the idea of campaigns made of a string of random maps.
Also how would randomly created maps, be anything near personally made?
If you want to include a story, even in a random generated map, you'd still have to edit it. Even more so, if tying a bunch of maps together into a campaign. Now what puzzles me even more, is how would you possibly balance the campaign if you just put together a string of random maps? I don't see much difference in wheter the randomly chosen maps are pre-made or all randomly generated for the occasion. Balance will be just as random as the maps.

The new devs. should be able to contact excellent strategy programmers of Firaxis in order to learn how their game "engine" can randomize the map tiles in a full world interaction of extremes of the map become a sphere feeling of such world. Thus, helping at making a proper suite of events that leads to a coherent campaign like follow-up that constitute a properly made campaign. Lore of the campaign can, afterwards, be properly written down as a cohersive story that does not skip chapters of the whole lore/story.

Otherwise, the thought of being forced to make everything by hand is becoming more work than it is truly needed to have fun playing such hand-made campaign. Me, personally, hate campaigns and, would rather make my own random proceedings onto a large or extra large map that has multiple ways at winning/conquering it all. Rather like playing a RISK type of a world conquest of a computer game than playing a damn RPG bound game.

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Heroes 5 upto Heroes 7 are the only Windows 10 Home/Pro games playable without major Modding to make them playable to such awesome modern O.S.

LucPatenaude said:The new devs. should be able to contact excellent strategy programmers of Firaxis in order to learn how their game "engine" can randomize the map tiles in a full world interaction of extremes of the map become a sphere feeling of such world.

What?? Why?? Nooooo, don't stop...
I think he's really on to something . The sky's the limit with such a feature, and we could have fan made campaigns produced in a matter of just a few days instead of months or years..
I've been dreaming of such an automated editor, that would be able to transfer my ideas to an actual map, without having to manually do it myself. It's brilliant!!!
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Me? Stop? That proposal is getting so old, it almost turned itself into a rant.

Karmakeld said:

LizardWarrior said:Luc pls stop.

What?? Why?? Nooooo, don't stop...
I think he's really on to something . The sky's the limit with such a feature, and we could have fan made campaigns produced in a matter of just a few days instead of months or years..
I've been dreaming of such an automated editor, that would be able to transfer my ideas to an actual map, without having to manually do it myself. It's brilliant!!!

Well...Thank-You very much my good sir. Drastic Change is the name of this game my friend. It is so overdue, its rotting away unnoticed.

To paraphrase Hamlet: To make a dream come true or, Not make a dream come true, Now that is real question, isn't not.

1- Making graphics is the last thing you need. Sure, grphics are nice but meaninglss without game. There are already of thousands of 3D assets ready-made of all sort of fantastic and real creatures for example.
And IF we are going to make our own graphics, we need to know graphics of WHAT first. AKA, we need to design and code all the games features before "drawing" them, be it in 2D or 3D. Else, the artists are just going to create random stuff and then we struggle to make sense of it. Towns will look like a mismash, map objects won't fit with eachother, and you need to create a feature just because a person did a nice model.

2- Maps CANNOT and I stress, CANNOT work without a functional game engine. VCMI is an open source H3 we can use fragments from to speed up this process. However the main thing is to have a competent programmer or team. So far we are missing, so maybe we have to create the concept first.

3- There are many, many dedicated mappers that love to create unbelievable custom-made personal campaigns, and you want to steal them that and just put random maps as a "campaign"?

4- Anyways, I agree that customized random map generation is a nice feature. But you need to do everything else FIRST for it to work. And it is no place to START.

See H5 mods, they have personalized random maps, people mod it. But even now, like 10 years after the original game was made and released, they STILL haven't finished it completely, still has some bugs, etc.

Graphics should not be the focus of such a project. It's not in our DNA. Ubi and their kin are those who prefer "cool" battle animations and sexy pixels as well as streamlining in general, over originality and difficulty. This division exists across the entire gaming world: for us on the mature side of the divide, 'dated' graphics might actually be a sign of good taste. Check out Age of Decadence for some inspiration (the setting is beautiful!), and Conquests of Elysium ofc. I rather go with isometric 3D like in H4, for some 'modern' examples of how beautiful it can be - check out the game Tyranny.

Anyway I'm probably gonna post some kind of set of proposals at some point... not as faction-focused as the former. Basically I think a good spin off game like this should be treated more like a "tool" to experience classic fantasy settings rather than a normal game, and be highly modable as well. I. e. it could support a game 'mode' that is closer to an RPG like in H4, one that's more like Paradox/Civ and other Empire management games with random events, character traits, possibly even governments and dynasties. And one that is closer to the classic H3 pure TBS. If the former is not part of the base game, at least the game should be able to be moded into something like that.

I'm thinking of something along the lines of 'Guildocracy' to represent the player and her heroes running a 'Guild' (Warlocks/Alchemists etc.) rather a nation, and interacting with various neutral guilds/factions. Though that might be too close to AoW. Would rather have Alignments more akin to H4 (plus an 'unaligned' alignment for minor factions etc - check out the incredible Endless Legend if you haven't done so btw!) but have the dwellings/cities/w. e. so customizable that you could basically have totally different factions inside the same alignment - it only being potentially relevant for optional stuff/artifacts/morale and magic ofc.
____________Ank's Old School (kinda) H8 proposal<- best thing evvah, trust me

From what I understand there is a possibility, though much unexplored, of having actual 3D models and instructing the video renderer ofoutputting it in real time as isometric images rather than a perspective.
If this can be achieved, in this way you can have the advantages of the "old school look" (readability, iconic, pictoric) with the advantages of actual 3D technology (lighting, shading and textures).

On the mechanics side, I must say I do like your idea of guilds... though I haven't played Age of Wonders to know how much a ripoff it would look like : P
How about the "factions"/towns be actually more like tied with the hero classes? In this way you could have a "Warlock" town but be it in a uniquely heroes-framed way. Different classes would get access to different creatures as well.

My last original idea is to do away with formal creature tiers entirely. Don't get me wrong, power levels would still very much apply, even in the same "Lvl 1 vs Lvl 7" scale. But the grading is much unfantasylike and tends to eventually leave useless the first creatures (in H7, lvl1 stack always quickly dies in last battle). In my scheme, weak creatures would be compensated by strong numbers. And you would have a dwelling limit instead of a tier limit. Example: Only 5 dwellings per town, but these can be of any power level available. If you want to have only mighty creatures and your hero faction allows you, you can make an all-Dragon town. Yet it would be handicapped because of low numbers and overall expense. On the other hand you could trow gremlins, imps, gnolls and centaurs together (make no mistake, this is just an example, your town would NOT have all these options available at once). But such "lowly" spam army would be easy to diminish and you would always take losses in battle. Best strategy would be to mix and match creature "tiers" even if you are not restricted, which would make it much more a tactical choice. Lots of skeletons, OR one Bone Dragon?
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H5 does seem pretty flexible because for example they were able to add extra dwellings to towns... yet getting it's source code is out of the question unless some of the "russian hackers" that created it leak it to us

For now we have VCMI code but we would have to write or get a whole new graphics interface (either isometric and/or 3D), else this would be H3 v2 (which we already have, and it's called vcmi :V )

By the way, I suspect still we could use Unreal Engine 4, which is Open Source, but to my knowledge no programmer has put itself onboard our project to write the scripts/adaptations to make it a TBS.

Creating a new heroes game is extremely risky to the Heroes name, it may not become a game that people recognize as Heroes. Even doing a remake of an older game is risky and difficult, if lucky you may be able to do a complete re-make without screwing it up. But if you have the idea to create a brand new one, you should be reluctant to call it "Heroes", it's extremely difficult to create something that gives the same feeling as another game. Unless you know what you're doing.

The real problem with that is not that there are not enough ideas, the problem is that there are too many ideas. You may have heard from game designers or other people that you can't create a good game without IDEAS and without creativity. But don't listen to them, you actually need less ideas to create a good game, you need to copy what is already working and religiously stay on that path. When completed, you may take small deviations.

Why people love Heroes: Games are simple, games are fast, Graphics are simple and produce vivid imaginations.

What should you do to create a good Heroes game? Some people don't realize that they are playing a simple game. Should you re-create it as a complex game? Do you think that will work?

When people love a simple game, they want to express their love for the game by creating a complex re-make of it. Can you see the mistake in that?

Some people can't see the mistake in that until they've done it, they've done a re-make and the whole interface is filled up with buttons and options and the player becomes so confused about what used to be a simple game that he abandons it in just a few minutes.

If you open up an old Heroes game, and you take a look at the incredible simple stuff you're seeing on the screen, well, what you're seeing is pure Wizardry work, no simple stuff. Even the colors have carefully been picked.

If you take a look at the simple sprites and the simple movements that they have when they move, not very realistic, but it because of that that they are perceived as realistic, because in a stupid world you define realism by the most stupid of things. If you try to replace that stupid movement with more realism, you may actually end up with less realism, even when they have more realism. (Old games maintain their realism by implementing less realism)

Heroes is not a simple game though, it has tend of mechanics, half dozen extra resources, and has already got three installments on full 3d at least one of which is sucessful :v

Artifacts, towns, heroes, creatures, upgrades, map objects, buildings, dwellings, artifacts, primary AND secondary skills, multitude of factions, spells, each with unique abilies and effects, magic schools... trust me, yhere is nothing "simple" abou heroes games, i have modded both heroes and rts and Heroes has the most layers of complexity.

The thing that eases the complexity is that players take it for granted.

But "might and magic" is the copyright, not "heroes". Ever heard of Heroes of the Storm for example? Heroes is just a genetic word you can put on any title.
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